the-real-seebs:

argumate:

glumshoe:

Sometimes “giving up” can be a valuable lesson. I’ve been thinking about this often lately during training – we are instructed to support our students in whatever challenges they set for themselves and not to pressure them into doing anything they’re significantly uncomfortable with. We let them set their own goals and don’t shame them for choosing not to climb all the way to the top of the rock wall, deciding not to ride the zipline, or backing out of going on the giant swing. Encouraging them to push their own boundaries is great, but push too hard and they won’t gain any psychological benefits from accomplishments.

I kind of wish I’d had more support like that as a kid. I was hard on myself. I refused to give up on anything, even when it made me utterly miserable or terrified. To this day, I have difficulty knowing where my boundaries are because I have almost always ignored them or pretended they didn’t exist. As much “strength of character” this may have created, it’s also put me in some really bad situations. Being able to “give up” and acknowledge that my personal feelings are as important as my goals and viable to change them has been very liberating.

sometimes I give up before I even get out of bed

This is excellent advice.

I used to be a much less effective programmer than I am now. I used to fuck up a lot more, mostly. You know what changed?

Let me paraphrase a thing I said in the internal company chat server last week:

“Okay, that’s the third really obvious error in the last half hour and I really need to reset, I’m gonna go spend half an hour with a blanket over my head like a bird pretending it’s night.”

And then I did it.

And then I came back and got stuff done.

What changed is I learned to recognize signs that I actually can’t work effectively right now and I need to stop trying and figure out what needs to happen to get me functional again. Food. Rehydrating. Shower. Shaving, because itchy face will absolutely make me grumpy and stupid. And sometimes I just plain don’t have the brain today, and if I try to write code, it will be bad. So I do other things, or hell, nothing. Because that will be less bad.

Giving up sometimes: Very important skill. If I hadn’t been willing to give up on a thing that was going badly, I think I’d still be trying to get even the first phase of a project done, instead of saying “okay I think this is ready to be tried out”.